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Theodore Roosevelt 

The Voice of America 




ADDRESS o/- JAMES B. DIGGS 
Delivered January 12. 19 19, at 

ROOSEVELT MEMORIAL SERVICES 



TULSA. OKLAHOMA 



Theodore Roosevelt: The Voice of America. 



ADDRESS OK JAMKS B. UIUUS, DELIVEKKI) 
JANUARY TWELVE, NINETEEN HUNDRED 
AND NINETEEN, AT ROOSEVELT SIEMORLAL 
EXERCISES, TULSA, OKLAHOMA : : : : 



Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: — 

In the silent watches of the night, calmly as the 
flowers fold their petals at set of sun, peacefully as a 
child at slumber on its mother's breast, the greatest Amer- 
ican, the greatest man of the English speaking races, 
you and I have known, one of the greatest that all the 
ages that have winged their flight and the ages yet to 
come, have known or will ever know, Theodore Roosr:- 
VELT, put off" mortality, put on immortality and by that 
mysterious natural ])rocess men misname death, passed 
from time into eternity to receive the victor's crown prom- 
ised to the just and faithful sei'vant. 

It is in consequence of this great affliction, this sore 
bereavement, that we are gathered with bowed heads 
and hushed hearts to commemorate the life and deeds 
of our beloved and illustrious dead. Dead, did I say? 
No. not dead, for he is of the few. the immortal ones thai 



Theodore Iloosevelt: The Voice of America. 



are not born to die, but to live forever in the heart and 
in the historj'' of man. 

Time does not permit, a due regard for your pa- 
tience forbids, that I should recount the many deeds by 
which this rarely gifted man won his way into the hearts 
and claimed the confidence of his people. As soldier, 
statesman, historian, man of letters and patriot, he has 
written his name in the splendid achievements that adorn 
and ennoble American history, and has himself become a 
part of that history. These deeds are yet fresh in your 
memory and I can only allude to, not dwell, upon them. 

This many-sided man presents so many qualities, 
each quality in itself so beautiful and so true and so en- 
titled to demand regard and receive consideration, that 
I must leave the duty of portrayal and delineation to the 
historian and be content to deal only with a few of the 
qualities that make him the only American since the im- 
mortal Washington of whom it can with truth be said 
that he is "first in the hearts of his countrymen." 

Other great Americans, it is true, have lived, ful- 
filled their parts and passed away, but none of them have 
so permeated all life, so riveted the attention of all man- 
kind, so deeply touched the national conscience, so smote 
the national heart and caused its holiest waters to flow. 
Of such great Americans Andrew Jackson and Henry 
Clay more nearly approach him in the qualities of lead- 
ership, in the qualities that fascinate the imagination and 
enthrall the soul of man, but neither was a prototype — ; 
a promise of the Roose\tslt that was yet to come. 

Andrevv' Jackson, in the full glory of a great mili- 
tary victory and by adroit appeals to the passions and 



Theodore Roosevelt: The Voice of America. 



prejudices of certain classes, climbed to the Presidency 
and became the idol of a great political party. Henry 
Clay, by the witchery of an eloquence unsurpassed in his 
day and by the force of a dominating personality, became 
the dictator of another great political party, and made his 
word its law, but each of these appealed only to a party or 
a section, and each, dying, left behind personal and polit- 
ical enmities that impress their bitterness on the history 
and leave their traces in the literature of today. 

RoosE\TLT, unlike Jackson, had not the glamour of 
a great military victory, achieved over a then hereditary 
enemy, to be the open sesame to the hearts of his coun- 
trj'men ; unlike Clay, he had not the gift of overmaster- 
ing eloquence to subdue the mind, enchant and enchain 
the judgment of his compeers; unlike each of these illus- 
trious Americans, his appeal was not addressed to a party 
nor to a section, and his death leaves no personal enmities, 
no political rancor, no sectional hate or prejudice, but in 
doing him honor. North, East, West and South join in 
generous rivalry; to attest his worth Jew and Gentile, 
Christian and Pagan, Protestant and Catholic, Democrat 
and Republican unite in noble emulation ; to do him rever- 
ence, king and peasant, potentate and toiler, join in trib- 
ute to his memory. Jackson and Clay became the great 
leaders of rival parties, the apostles of rival political 
creeds, Roosevelt without rivalry the apostle of man- 
kind, the voice of truth, the tribune of all the people, thci 
acknowledged spokesman of America. 

One source of the spell of his mastery over the minds 
and hearts of men, one secret of his hold on the affections 
and his command of the confidence of mankind, lies in 



4 Theodore Roosevelt: The Voice of America. 

the fact that in all the relations of life as son, husband, 
father and citizen, he was what all men should strive to 
be, and what we each at some time, hope to be. 

Fearless he trod the path of life, and with a sincer- 
ity -vidthout disguise and singleness of purpose he dis- 
charged the task at hand. The instruments he used for 
the accomplishment of his purpose were entire devotion 
to the cause, transparent honesty, unflagging energj', and 
a fidelity beyond purchase or price. He recognized no 
criterion save that of the welfare and interests of Amer- 
ica and mankind, he set no limits to his ceaseless endeav- 
ors to advance and serve such except the limits imposed 
by straight dealing, honor and truth ; with truth, simple 
truth, the heart's own country music ever on the lips, and 
the love of righteous justice in his heart, he went into the 
arena the self-consecrated champion of the people to fight 
the people's cause, and so the people came to believe in 
him, to follow him and fold him to their hearts with a 
devotion defeat could not lessen and time will not tame. 

No official etiquette, no cloistered seclusion, separated 
him from his kind ; no pride of official station, no false 
sense of personal greatness, no belief in the inerrancy or 
infallibility of his private opinion or individual judgment 
prevented contact and counsel with his countrymen. He 
met in office, and out of office, all classes of his fellow 
citizens; the proscribed millionaire and the heads of la- 
bor; the great captains of industry; the leaders of the 
great political parties and the men in the ranks. He met 
and mingled with the men of the forest and the men of 
the plain ; the men of the mine and the men of the loom ; 
the men of the land and the men of the sea: the college 



Theodore Roosevelt: The Voice of America. 5 

fellow and the common-school student; the leaders of ad- 
vanced thought and the men in the street, he counseled 
and talked with each of them ; he listened to each of them, 
shared in their joys, heard their tales of life, partook of 
their suffering, learned of their success and rejoiced in 
their triumphs, and made their lives a part of his own, 
and so came to know the great heart and understand the 
mind and purpose of America and so to read its con- 
science, to gauge its aspirations, to grasp its springs of 
holiest inspiration and noblest endeavor. And thus it was 
that when he spoke, his voice became, was the voice of 
America, America incarnate and articulate, and you and 
I, and all of us, found that he but uttered the thought, 
the aspirations and desires that we long had unawares 
entertained and but needed the notes of his clarion voice 
to fiower into speech and become a part of life's creed, this 
enabled him to translate our thought into speech and say 
the things we would fain have said, better, more directly 
and effectively than we, ourselves, could say them, and so 
made our voice the voice of America. 

The passion of service, the courage to do and dare all 
things in the cause of truth and right, abhorrence of in- 
justice and oppression, not ambition to rule, not lust of 
power, it seems to me, together with a patriotism that 
recognized no sacrifice as too great, were his dominating- 
characteristics. He, himself, has told us that service was 
the great thing in life and made his own life an example 
of his precept, and held if the service was rendered, it 
was immaterial that in rendering it, the instrument was 
broken or consumed. 

Love of power and desire to dominate and control 



Theodore Roosevelt: The Voice of America. 



have been ascribed to him, but when we come to examine 
the basis on which such charge rests, it will be noted that 
he saw the need of the hour, saw the duty to be performed, 
saw the necessity to be up and doing, and seeing the things 
at hand to be done, he turned to the doing of them regard- 
less that in the doing, there might be no reward save that 
which springs from the sense of duty well performed, of 
obligation met and discharged. This phase of his charac- 
ter, I think, can best be presented in his own words : 

"The leader for the time being, whoever he may be, 
is but an instrument to be used until broken and then to 
be cast aside ; and if he is worth his salt he will care no 
more when he is broken than a soldier cares when he is 
sent where his life is forfeit in order that the victoiy may 
be won. In the long fight for righteousness the watch- 
Avord for us all is spend and be spent. It is of little matter 
whether any one man fails or succeeds, but the cause shall 
not fail, for it is the cause of mankind. We, here in 
America, hold in our hands the hope of the world, the fate 
of the coming years; shame and disgrace will be ours if 
in our eyes the light of high resolve is dimmed, if we trail 
in the dust the golden hopes of man." 

Roosevelt was an idealist but his idealism was that 
of the practical and farsighted man of affairs who trans- 
mutes inspiration into action ; the idealism that sought to 
correct the evils of today, to redress the wrongs of today ; 
the idealism that sought to qualify man worthily to fulfill 
the duties of that station in life to which it had pleased 
Almighty God to call him. If he could accomplish, or 
assist in accomplishing this he was content to leave the 
coming of that golden millennium which seers have proph- 
esied, of which sages dream and poets sing, to the dreamer 



Theodore Roosevelt: The Voice uf America. 



of dreams, and the slow processes of time, and to be the 
doer of things ; but in no cause in which the rights of man 
were the stakes; in no battle wherein enthroned evil chal- 
lenged the righteousness of the world to its overthrow was 
he ever too proud or too weary to fight, and no sacrifice 
was too gi-eat to achieve the victory, for he knew the path- 
way of the cross was the pathway of civic and individual 
regeneration; that sacrifice must ever be the crown of 
consecration ; that by some immutable law of fate, some 
inscrutable decree of a wise Providence, the pathway of 
the world's progress is ever crimsoned with the blood and 
strewn with the bones of men ; that only from the sacri- 
fice and broken hearts of today could spring the white 
fiower of the blameless and perfect life of the morrow ; 
that the diadem of the realized hopes of man is Calvary's 
crown of thorns. 

RoosEX-ELT, like all the divinely gifted men that have 
mastered man, was an optimist, but his optimism was of 
the sound and sane character that never loses sight of the 
fundamental facts of nature, that was never oblivious to 
the great moral laws regulating all existence ; he was an 
optimist, but his optimism had the wisdom to face the fact 
that the mailed and clenched fist of a just wrath rightly 
applied was a more potent instrument than the sorcery 
of words — a more powerful agent than mystic idealism, 
though couched in all the magical beauty of a perfect scho- 
lastic phraseology, for the eradication and removal of 
abuses and oppression that corrode and darken life and 
rob existence of joy ; he was an optimist who had faith 
in the efficacy of repentance, the virtue of forgiveness, the 
wisdom of charity, but his optimism was mellowed by the 



8 Theodore Roosevelt: The Voice of America. 

sanity that holds repentance must be followed by contri- 
tion and restitution before we award forgiveness; that 
transgression must bear its burden of punishment and 
make repai*ation before it is entitled to demand or to re- 
ceive absolution, and must rise on its dead self to higher 
levels before we should drape its hideous countenance with 
the mantle of an all-concealing charity; he was an op- 
timist but one whose clear vision realized that persever- 
ance and ceaseless effort were the golden keys to the gaol 
of the future and the release of the imprisoned aspira- 
tions of mankind; he was an optimist who believed in the 
eventual triumph of right but, his optimism, recognized 
the stubborn fact that in order to secure that triumph we 
must manfully do our part and trust in God with the cer- 
tainty that He would perform His; an optimist whose 
lexicon contained no such word as failure or defeat in 
the fight for a just cause, and whose prescience foresaw 
that such fight once begun is never lost, that though baf- 
fled oft is ever M'on, won as surely as the sun blazes his 
track of glory athwart the skies ; an optimist who believed 
in the final perfection of man but acknowledged, the sub- 
tle truth that in the economy of the natural as in that of 
the celestial world, perfection claims its purchase price 
and that the agony of crucifixion must precede the splen- 
dor of transfiguration. 

No American has given, no American can give a 
greater sacrifice in greater measure to the cause he loved 
and to the cause of righteousness than Roose\'ELT. When 
denied the privilege of purchasing American safety with 
his own blood, like the Spartan of old he girded up hiy 
sons and sent them forth to battle, to shed their blood 



Theudora liooscvcU: The Voice of America. 



and to die for the country that refused the scarament of 
his own, and when his hero son fell, with great simplicity 
he left his ashes to repose undisturbed in the fair fields 
of that land his death helped to liberate, and with a great- 
ness, truly American, denied a claim to greater consider- 
ation than that due the humble thousands who made a 
like sacrifice and mingled his sorrow with the holy pride 
that his son, and that son's father and mother had been 
willing to make the last great sacrifice in order that Amer- 
ica might live and righteousness be triumphant through- 
out the world. 

Knowing these things, is it a wonder that Americans 
have loved this man as they have loved no other? 

His services to the country were of the heart and 
not of the lips, were of the deed and not of the prom- 
ise. With him, pitiless publicity became an actuality, an 
avenging nemesis with which he drove faithless officials 
and corrupt public servants from the capitol, and service 
of the country, as Christ of old scourged the money lend- 
ers and the thieves from the Temple of the Living God. 

A courage, without fear, was his. A courage that 
saw only the end to be attained and the way and means by 
which that end was to be attained, and he trod that way 
and wrought to achieve that end without regard of self, 
without hesitating to consider what the results to him 
might be. And so, when the relentless and savage hordes 
of William the Assassin plundered violated Belgium and 
devastated devoted France and boldly proclaimed the in- 
iquitous doctrine that treaties were scraps of paper and 
flaunted in the face of Heaven the Christless creed that 
might makes right, the courageous heart of Roosea'ELT 



10 Theodore Roosevelt: The Voice of America. 

knew no neutrality of thought; knew no neutrality of 
word; knew no neutrality of action, save that imposed 
by official sanction. 

When nations truckled to and fawned upon the Ger- 
man Moloch, red as Herod with the blood of slaughtered 
innocents; when Cabinets used the language of supplica- 
tory expostulation in vain attempts to propitiate the bes- 
tial Teuton war-god ; when Senators met German propa- 
gandists in secret midnight conclave to barter American 
rights for hyphenated votes ; when college presidents and 
professors prated of German power, superiority and ef- 
ficiency and became the ready and subservient instru- 
ments of imperialistic propaganda; when servile politi- 
cians quailed in submission before the might of an organ- 
ized foreign vote ; when America, wrapt in the pursuit of 
gain, seemed unable to find her conscience; when it ap- 
peared that the Hun agents, pacificists, and the Huns 
within our gates might succeed in stifling the true voice of 
America until the armed foot of the invader was on our 
own soil, and civilization should be overthrown in Europe, 
his lone voice, like the wild clamor of a fire bell in the 
night, rang out, continued to ring out until it alarmed our 
fears, continued to ring out until it caused action. 

The prophetic soul of Roosevelt realized from the 
first that the battle lines in Europe were the first trenches 
of the American defense, and through all the clamor of 
official and unofficial detraction, through all the derision 
of pacificists, through all the fierce misrepresentations of 
Hun and shirkers, through all the false imputations of 
personal and revengeful purposes, in face of official de- 
nial of its statements, that voice still rang out louder and 



Theodore Roosevelt: The Voice of America. 11 

more insistent and refused to be stilled until it found and 
pierced the heart and fired the conscience of America, for 
the voice was the voice of Roosevelt and he knew that at 
length America would recognize it as her own and rouse 
to action. A braver deed, a sublimer feat, the annals of 
the world do not disclose. 

These are a few and but a few of the things that have 
won for this remarkable and truly great man a more than 
Eastern devotion, and explain why the four corners of 
the earth have come together to do him honor. 

But he has passed from us. 

In the noon-day luster of a just renown ; in the full 
fruition of his fame ; in the full maturity of all his facul- 
ties and before one had felt "decay's effacing fingers"; 
before his powers passed meridian splendor ; greeted with 
enthusiasm ; followed by affection ; crowned with a peo- 
ple's love; dowered with a people's confidence — the great 
American died ; died as he had lived ; died as he wished to 
die — with the harness on — and left his deathless fame the 
richest legacy of his age to time. Let us mourn for him, 
but proudly mourn, as we bestow on eternity a Jewel 
"richer than all our tribe." 



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